(A/N): This is an entirely newly written chapter. It was also written right after I bashed my head on the metal frame holding up the external unit for my air conditioner so blame any quality issues on the giant lump on my noggin.

Trigger Warning: Discussion of self harm.

Elaine

I suppose it shouldn't have surprised us that Leo had hurt himself more than once. It was, as Peter pointed out, before Brooke had told us, and we had confronted him. What had Leo been meant to tell us at that point?

'I know you're already yelling at me about hurting myself the one time, but I should probably let you know I've done it more than once'? Even if Leo were the forthcoming type (which he most definitely isn't) that wasn't the sort of thing you just blurted out all willy nilly.

Oh, if only Leo were the forthcoming type. Merlin, that'd make all our lives so much easier.

The first thing we did, upon returning to the Gryffindor common room was to let Brooke know- discreetly of course. She seemed saddened, but not all that surprised- which I guess is what happens when you've seen it first hand.

Next, we went to fill in Lily, who hadn't been in the Room of Requirement with us for that little revelation. It took us a little while to get our stories straight- we couldn't exactly tell her we knew he had self harmed more than once because his vampiric abilities would have healed him before I accidentally saw it.

It was easy enough to get her up into the boys dormitory by telling her we had made a new discovery about Leo, but I regretted the way we had phrased it when I saw how worried she was.

"He's not- in danger, is he?" James put a hand on her arm, guiding her to sit on Leo's bed, and handed her a pillow to squeeze.

"No. Not from anyone but us, anyway." Remus's statement didn't seem to calm her down as much as he thought it would.

"Oh Merlin, what did he do now? Did he hurt himself again-? Oh, god, no..." She knew from our faces she had guessed correctly. "But- he seemed good, didn't he? Maybe not happy, but-" I cut her off before she could worry herself further into a corner.

"It's not recent. Its from before- before Brooke told us." Lily relaxed slightly. "You know when I saw his scars? That day, after they broke up, when I leant on him wrong on the couch in the common room?" Lily waved me on somewhat frantically, already knowing exactly what time I was talking about two clarifications ago.

"Well, when Brooke told us about it, she told us about the time he- hurt himself- before they broke up, the day she was really angry at him- which is also, coincidentally, the day he called Elaine, 'Baby'." What? That was the same day? Shit! Of course Remus would be the one to remember that. "It wasn't until after they broke up, a few days later, that Elaine saw the scars- scars that were too fresh to be from the incident Brooke told us about." Lily frowned.

"I mean, I get where you're trying to go with this, but... when we confronted him about it and he yelled at us for caring about him-" A much nicer way of describing Leo's reaction than I would have done. "His scars didn't exactly look old then, either, and that was after the full moon, which was a few days after Elaine saw them." God, this was going to be hard to explain.

"Lily... Look, we can't exactly explain it..."

Wait.

"Maybe he just healed really slowly, or maybe the animagi transformation opened them back up."

Wait.

"Leo heals quickly, even you know that."

Wait.

"Is this one of those times where you know something for reasons you won't tell me?"

WAIT.

"Holy. Fucking. Shit." All eyes turned to me in an instant.

"Uh... Elaine? Care to catch the rest of us up to speed?" Remus asked tentatively, even though he clearly didn't like the direction my brain must have headed to get to such expletives.

"They were fresh." They seemed disturbed by this, even though they didn't particularly understand. "He told Brooke the first time they'd be healed by dinner." So far they were with me, even Lily, who seemed confused by how fast I 'thought' Leo could heal. "He didn't have them on the full moon, we would have seen them, and Remus definitely would have smelt them." Even I hated where I was going with this.

"Sometime between leaving the hospital wing the morning after the full moon, and when we confronted him the next night, Leo hurt himself a third time."

(A/N): When you make a mistake timing certain events, make more events to fill in the gaps!

This chapter has had a minor edit made to it on 26/4/23 - Added the trigger warning.